


Welcome Home, Son

by InSpiteOfAllTheHeartaches



Series: A Small Life [4]
Category: Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Bittersweet, F/M, Family, Fluff, Oldsies, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-15 05:26:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29928573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InSpiteOfAllTheHeartaches/pseuds/InSpiteOfAllTheHeartaches
Summary: Once a year, Katherine Kelly visits Santa Fe. Part of the A Small Life series, with minor spoilers for the first story in that series.
Relationships: Jack Kelly/Katherine Plumber Pulitzer
Series: A Small Life [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2119809
Comments: 9
Kudos: 6





	Welcome Home, Son

**Author's Note:**

> Please be kind, I wrote this in half an hour! Comments are, as always, very much appreciated xx

Once a year, Katherine Kelly visits Santa Fe.

She has done every year for the past four years, and she fully intends to keep doing so just as long as her legs will carry her up the dirt track to the little copse of trees overlooking the city. Since last year, she needs a walking stick to help her up the hill, but there’s life in her old legs yet. She told Alfred so, when he asked her whether she needed his help.

He’s insisted on driving her this year, saying he doesn’t want her getting the train on her own. That boy of hers is just as protective as his father. But she needs this, and she’ll do it on her own as long as she possibly can, so though Alfred has driven them all the way from New York to Santa Fe, she is going to climb this hill on her own.

He’s a good boy, that boy of hers, though he’s always hinting that she should try and get Jack transferred somewhere closer to home. She won’t. Jack’s happy here. But she doesn’t feel so bad asking Alfred to help her with things anymore, not now that his own children are grown up and moved out. Jack, Katherine knows, will be so proud of them. Alfred’s daughter, Kate, gave them their fifth great-grandchild this year. Katherine has brought a photograph to show Jack, one in full colour of Kate looking very tired and very proud while holding her son in the hospital bed. _Jack Connor,_ it says on the back, _born 15 th March, 1972, weighing 7lbs 2oz. _Jack will be delighted.

He’s waiting for her like he always is, under the cypress tree. He’s always been there, whenever she needed him, and the distance hasn’t changed anything. It hurts her knees and her back now, to sit down on the warm grass beside him. Maybe she ought to take up Miriam’s invitation to join her aquatic fitness class in the home’s pool.

“Hello, my love, how are you doing today?”

Katherine smiles at him, runs her hand affectionately down his side. They pass the time with pleasantries, until she remembers that he hates small talk and loves her talking about her work, so she launches into it.

“Do you remember that anti-Vietnam protest march that I told you about last year? Yes, I did persuade Charlotte to take me, though she didn’t let me get out of the car. I _told_ her that I’d be fine, that I’d been to lots more dangerous protests than that one. Doesn’t she remember that we met in a strike, I said to her? Well, she stood her ground on that one, she did. Don’t know where she gets that stubbornness from. I blame you. It definitely comes from your side of the family. Well, I did write a fantastic article about it – yes, I can still get published at eighty-nine. I had to get Charlotte to write it down for me, my hands are bit shaky these days, but they were my words that ended up on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. And look at your great-grandchild!”

She holds out the photograph for him to see, angling it so that the glow of afternoon sun that paints them in its light doesn’t reflect off the shiny surface of the print.

“Isn’t he just lovely? They’ve named him after you, you know; I went to visit Kate in the hospital and she said that she wished you could be there. Our David gets his lot of great-grandchildren to pray for you every night, you know, that you’re happy and that you’re doing well. They’ve got this picture of you with little Georgia up on the wall in the kitchen, from Christmas a few years ago, you helping her with that little set of paints that we bought for her, remember? She still points at it and says _Gramps._ See, she remembers you.”

Katherine falters at that, turns her head away as her eyes grow misty. It always upsets him to see her cry, especially over him. Still, she can’t keep the tears out of her throat as she carries on.

“We all think about you a lot. I do, especially. We miss you lots and we wish that you could come home to us, but we know that you’re better off- well, if you could, you’d be elbowing me right now, wouldn’t you? _None of that_ , _Ace,_ you’d say, _none of that._ ”

She smiles a little at the thought of his voice, wiping away a stray tear with her wrinkled hand.

“What else, before I get all maudlin? Oh, I went to Crutchie’s grave the other day, just to leave some flowers, you know? I found these novelty ones in the supermarket, where they were planted in an old-fashioned butter dish – the kind that my parents bought us for our fifth wedding anniversary, apparently such things are _retro_ now – and I just had to get them for him, even though being called retro made me feel like an antique. And I’m not antique, before you say it – to be antique you have to be one-hundred years old and I’m barely even ninety. Anyway, whoever the fellow is who sorts out that cemetery must wonder what on earth that Mr. Morris did to deserve such gifts, but I rather like to imagine his confusion. Let him think I’m senile, if he likes, we both know that I’m sharp as a tack and always have been – still your smart girl, aren’t I? I haven’t brought you anything, because I know that you’d think it was stupid, that you’d look at me with those eyes even though you can’t talk back.

“Just look at that view. I’m so glad your old eyes get to look at that view every day. You’re happy here, aren’t you? Of course you are. I’ll come and join you soon, you know, there’s just some things that I have to sort out first. Getting the new wills sorted out and that sort of thing. I do wish Davey was still with us, he’d have been so very helpful with all this legal jargon. I’ve said that half our savings are going to the family and then that other half is going to that charity you liked – what was it? I forget the name. The one that always used to ring up on the telephone and you’d pledge twenty dollars like it was nothing every time. Considering you’re so streetwise, they really did know how to play you.” Katherine chuckles. “Honestly, it was almost worse than when we went to adopt the kids and you wanted to take every child in the orphanage home. Anyway, I’ve given it to that charity, so some other children will get it. But it should be sorted soon. I can’t wait to be able to see you all the time. We can cuddle up in an armchair, like we used to. We can just sit and look at that view.”

She’d picked this spot specially, for it to be a place for the two of them to meet, to give him something to look at before she gets here. The view is beautiful. Santa Fe, a mirage of pink spattered skies and lush green trees, all spread out before them and theirs for the taking, even better than the view from his penthouse. The penthouse is long gone now, the lodgehouse torn down and replaced with a block of executive office spaces which have abstract art, the kind Jack hates, in the corridors. But it doesn’t matter, now, because they have this, all clean and green and pretty. Santa Fe is big now, bigger than either of them had ever imagined it could get, but that suits them just fine. A small life in a big city. That’s just fine, because it’s _their_ small life. So long as they’re together, a small town or a big city, it’s home.

And that’s what Katherine says, humming the words under her breath, as she leans her head on the smooth, sun-warmed surface of Jack’s gravestone.

“Welcome home to Santa Fe.”

**Author's Note:**

> Jack passes away at the age of 88 in 1968, surrounded by his family. Katherine has him buried on a green hill overlooking Santa Fe and makes a yearly pilgrimage there until her own death in 1973, when she is buried in the grave beside him.


End file.
